Who Is Responsible?

Published:First published inPravdaNo. 96, July 14 (1), 1917.

      Published according to thePravdatext.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,1977,

      Moscow,Volume 25,

      pages151-152.Translated:Transcription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive.  

      2002You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work, as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

Mr.N. Rostov quotes in the ministerialRabochaya
      Gazetaseveral excerpts from soldiers’ letters which attest
      to the extreme ignorance of the peasants. The author, according
      to his own words, has at his disposal a bulky batch of letters
      sent to the Agitation Department of the Executive Committee of
      the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies from every part of
      the country. He says that all the letters clamour for one and
      the same thing: Papers, send us papers!

TheMenshevik writer suddenly exclaims in alarm: “If the
      revolution does not get through to them [the peasants] as a
      clear fact of great usefulness, they will rise against the
      revolution....” The peasants are “as ignorant as
      ever”.

TheMenshevik and ministerial official was a bit late in
      becoming alarmed over his batch of letters. More than seven
      weeks have passed since May 6, when the Mensheviks began to
      serve the capitalists, and in all this time bourgeois
      counter-revolutionary lies and slander against the revolution
      have
      been pouring freely into the countryside through the bourgeois
      papers, which have become dominant, through the direct and
      indirect servants and supporters of the capitalist government
      backed by the Mensheviks.

Ifthe Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries had not been
      betraying the revolution and supporting the counter
      revolutionary Cadets, power would have been in the hands of the
      Executive Committee since early May. The Executive Committee
      could immediately have established a state monopoly over
      private advertising in the press, and could thus have obtainedtens of millionsof newspaper copies forfreedistribution in the countryside. The large printingpresses and
      stocks of newsprint would have been used by the

      Executive Committee to enlighten the peasants and not to befog
      them through a dozen or so bourgeois, counter-revolutionary
      newspapers which have virtuallyseized the key rolein
      the newspaper business.

TheExecutive Committee could then have disbanded the Duma, and,
      having saved the people’s money on this—not to speak of
      many other things—it could have spent that money on
      sending a thousand agitators, or even thousands of them, to the
      countryside.

Intimes of revolution, procrastination is often equivalent to
      a complete betrayal of the revolution. Responsibility for the
      delay in the transfer of power to the workers, soldiers and
      peasants, for the delay in carrying through revolutionary
      measures to enlighten the ignorant peasants, rests wholly on the
      Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks.

Theyhave betrayed the revolution on this
      matter.Theybear the blame for the fact that the
      workers and soldiers are forced to limit themselves to primitive
      means in the fight against the counter-revolutionary bourgeois
      press and agitation, whereas they could and should have hadnation-wide meansfor the purpose.